Food industry speci c ordering.

Mezze is an online ordering platform designed specifically for the food manufacturing industry, offering an alternative to traditional email, phone and fax ordering. Utilised by Samworth Brothers, Simply Lunch and the Real Wrap Co, it’s this food industry focus that gives its approach the edge over its more generic rivals, argues Mezze’s Hugo Walker.

ONCE BITTEN, TWICE SHY?

It should come as a surprise to no one that food companies which have tried to implement large-scale ordering solutions in the past are hesitant to give it a second chance. Remember the expense? The complication? The undelivered promises of a pot of efficiency gold at the end of the implementation rainbow? Why would you go through all that again? You might be using your ERP’s (Enterprise Resource Planning) generic ordering platform. You might be using an off the shelf solution. You might have built your own ordering software, probably based on a generic blueprint for what an ordering platform ‘ought to look like’. Chances are that what you have ended up with has been heavily customised to suit food industryspecific needs. Broad solutions like these have their place. No one is suggesting you should bin your ERP, which has all sorts of back-office firepower your business needs, but in my opinion, when it comes to ordering, a generic platform can’t meet the unique ordering needs of today’s food to go (FTG) sector. Perishable product, rapidly changing demand, early order cut-offs, allergen reporting, variable customer pricing and last-minute amendments are some of the many challenges to be met these days whatever software you decide to use. Yes, you can tune a generic ordering platform to accommodate the brief, but potentially at considerable cost and complication. And as the industry — or your business — changes, those modifications may no longer be fit for purpose. Back to the drawing board you go...

Food industry specific ordering

WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES?

Chances are you are currently using one of the following solutions to meet your food ordering needs.

ERP+

You bought into a large-scale ERP system and customised it for your food ordering needs. It’s a bit clunky and there are things it will not do, but it cost a lot of money and supports a number of different business areas. As a result, operations are modified to suit what it can and can’t do. The cost and complication of upgrading the ERP is prohibitive.

Fax/phone

Yes, the technology that served the industry in the mid-1980s is still going strong in your operation. Three decades of supercharged developments in computational technology have elapsed, but your ordering software — insofar as it exists — fails to be as efficient as hiring someone to manually place and amend daily orders.

Bespoke software solution

You built an ordering system for your business. It was specified as an all-singing, all-dancing fix for your food ordering needs and the CTO flushed with pride to think of the transformational effect it would have on the business. But the debugging was never quite completed and

modifications to keep up with the changing business environment have stalled, particularly since developers no longer work with the code it was written in. A number of workarounds are in place to keep it hobbling along.

Off the shelf software

It’s pretty, easy to use and doesn’t cost much. No wonder you decided it was a no-brainer to go with it. It sounded like it could do everything you needed, but now you realise a consumer-facing eCommerce product isn’t what fits your business and your customers are starting to realise it too.

Some/all of the above

This isn’t what hybrid working means. You know how and why you got here, but how much longer can you fudge along with an outdated or ‘make do’ technology solution underpinning your food ordering operation before it undermines your business?

Why the food industry needs an industry-specific ordering platform

It’s possible that you are entirely happy with one of these solutions. Everyone understands it and it works. The alternatives are too costly and there is too much that could go wrong. “Besides, we’ve always done it this way.” But the food industry is advancing just like any other. Digital transformation — the widespread adoption of technology to empower and streamline business operations — will come. Finding industryspecific solutions that anticipate your business needs and adapt to industry trends in real-time is part of the fourth industrial revolution (the one currently underway).

To better understand Industry 4.0, we need to rewind a couple of centuries. The first industrial revolution involved mechanisation through water and steam power, followed by mass production and the incorporation of electricity into processes to increase scope and efficiency. This is where Industry 3.0 comes in, characterised by the adoption of computers and early automation processes.

Industry 4.0 essentially dials this up to elevate processes beyond human capabilities — analysing data at newfound speeds and developing automation at exponential rates. For sandwich manufacturers, this fourth industrial revolution is creating numerous opportunities to digitise supply and demand systems, thereby reducing waste and maximising profitability. Many other industries are already benefiting from software built with their particular needs in mind. A glut of industry-specific software is emerging in response to dissatisfaction with the abilities of generic platforms to anticipate the unique needs of any given vertical. An ordering platform designed specifically for the food industry can anticipate sector-specific needs and adapt as new ordering trends emerge. It should interface perfectly with your existing technology allowing business as usual to continue while customers get the benefit of a made-to-measure, branded front end that meets their needs and yours. In the case of Mezze, it has been designed to work by addressing the exact needs of food ordering and can be integrated to work alongside legacy technology in your business. It can be implemented quickly and customised with your brand identity. Its powerful ordering and self-serve features also mean that you can remove the customer service burden, with the aim of helping to provide a better experience for your customers. You can muddle along with your existing ordering system(s) so long as your competitors do the same. But if your competitors adapt, you could be left behind, whereas if you adapt first, they are likely to as well.